Photos

You can buy these crazy russian military hats in eastern europe. I'm not sure if it is a replica or not, it seemed authentic. This was in Krakow.

The view from the fotress in Salzburg Austria. Fortress is perched on top of this hill and has never been conquered, but it was handed over willingly to Napoleon when he rolled through.

*sigh* camera not straight yet again.

Over exposed picture of the colosseum in Rome. Note the rebuild floor section.

I had a photo of M at McDonald's after she finished scarfing down a Royale with cheese. She wouldn't let me post it though



View from the top of a old fortification tower in Lucerne Switzerland, you can see the lake in the background.

Some Swiss alpine horn players outside the cathedral in Strasbourg, France.

Part of the canal in Strasbourg, France.

Internet Cafes

Currently in Florence, saw Michaelangelo's "David" yesterday. Went to Budapest, Salzburg, Venice and Rome since my last post.

Finally get a chance to use an Internet cafe and of course the computer's locked up so I can't post photos *sigh*. It's too bad because I had a few good ones, I'll get them up soon. I took a recent comment into account and have one documenting poor hostel accomodations. However, most of the problems with hostels are unphotographical. I am working on another photo essay for this trip unrelated to hostels but it won't be ready until after I get back, I have to write a bunch of captions for the photos.

To give you a taste, examples of bad accomodations: hostel rooms being at the top of four flights of stairs with no elevator, hostels located in red light districts with aggresive bouncers trying to lure you in, general noise at night in the hostels. In Prague, the hostel room at the top of four flights of stairs, was probably the worst. We had no less than four keys for the place. One key to open the door from the street shared with a restaurant, one key to open the entrace to the stairs, after climbing four flights of stairs you used a key to open the hostel apartment. You then used another key to open the door to the room where the beds were, we also had another key for lockers they supplied us with. Not only that, the hostel was littered with warning signs about not letting in strangers who might knock. Our first night there we were sitting decided what to do about supper when there is a knock at the door to the apartment. M and I gave each other a puzzled look as we had both commented on the numerous signs saying not to let anyone in who knocks. Our American hostel mate who had been milling around the room immediately goes to the apartment door and lets the stranger in, walking by numerous signs telling him not to let strangers in. The stranger comes in, doesn't say anything just sits at the table with M and I. The American who let him in then immediately leaves, leaving just M the stranger and I in the room looking at each other. We did manage to determine that he was actually staying in the an ajacent bed room and his friends had a key, but it took about twenty minutes of talking to him to determine that. The only way to capture that in a picture would me punching the American who let him in in the face, but then I would still need this long winded story to explain why there is a photo of me punching someone in the face.

Some Pictures

Belvedere Palace, Vienna. Houses a museum that includes Klimt's "The Kiss". The palace doesn't lean, that's me not holding the camera straight.

A small part of Berkenau (Aushwitz II) from the tower above the railway tracks. Located one hour from Krakow, Poland.

View of Prague Castle at sunset from our hostel window, the only good thing about that hostel.

Copenhagen

I haven't finished the Iceland wrapup yet, but I am going to briefly move on and talk about places we went to afterwards when it is relatively fresh in my mind.

Flew in to Copenhagen from Keflavik Iceland on July 25. Plane was a small Boeing jet, an MD-90 I think, have never been on one of those before. We got to our hostel at about 9pm to find that we didn't have a reservation. Being a summer weekend the hostel was full. They were nice enough to give us a phone list of about ten other copenhagen hostels to see if they had room, five of which the hostel told us were also full. I set to trying to decipher a Danish pay phone in the lobby, not even four years of computer science helped with that, I found out later the phone was actually broken. In the mean time two beds in different rooms opened up and it being late and us being tired we took them. The hostel, the biggest one in Europe and maybe the world, was nice enough but the stress of not being sure where we were going to sleep and staying in different rooms was annoying to say the least. We also had the prospect of trying to find somewhere else to stay for the next two nights as the hostel was booked solid for weeks. The next morning we through in the towel quite early and stayed at an actual hotel. We still had to share a bathroom but we got our own room and a TV. Interestingly enough a channel on the television showed nothing but pornograhpy all day. Not the soft stuff played latenight on TQS in Quebec, full on hardcore porn, shocking. Once the novelty of that wore off we ventured outside. By luck the Glyptotek was free that day, it is an art gallery in a beautiful building donated by the guy who ran the Carlsberg beer factory. We also went to the Danish history museum and took a tour of the old Carlsberg beef factory, which is a masterpiece of 19th century industrial architecture. Our hotel was nice enough, but happened to be located in the red light district so we got lulled to sleep every night by arguments of prostifutes and police sirens. It really wasn't that bad, red light districts in Scandanavia are nothing to be afraid of. The amount of bicycles in Copenhagen is astonishing, I would say there was 5000 bikes locked up outside the train station at any one time. They even have this program where you can "borrow" a bike by putting in a coin and unlocking a bike, kind of like how you unlock a shopping cart at the super market, you get the coin back when you return the bike. The bike are kind of rickety but work well enough, especially in a city as flat as Copenhagen, probably the number one reason why so many people ride bikes there.

Iceland Wrap-Up

In Berlin at the moment. Have finished visting Scandanavia, went to Copenhagen and Stockholm in the past week. Just wanted to post a few final thoughts about Iceland and some logistical details.

Food

Food in Iceland is expensive. When you factor in the quality of the food at the price you are paying it is heinous. When on the road the only place to eat in a hurry is cafes in gas stations. They normally serve hamburgers, hot dogs and such. If the place is really small only hot dogs. A hot dog that has been sitting in hot water all day with a half stale bun costs about $5 CDN. Anything with meat in a sit down restaurant will cost you atleast $50 CDN. Grocery stores are the way to eat cheap, and most of the places we stayed in had kitchens so we did that to keep costs down. Fresh bread was almost impossible to find outside of the major cities, it made toasting the bread necessary to make it edible. For a country that is surrounded by water and whose main industry if fishing they seem to care little for fresh fish. I think there is cod in the oceans and salmon in the rivers but this doesn´t seem to make it to the grocery stores. Every grocery store does sell dried foul smelling cod. I can understand this preservation technique in antiquity but this should have been phased out with the advent of reliable refridgeration. One good thing is they have this cheese product that is soft and packaged like yorgurt that is really good, it is called skyr and is available through most of scandanavia.

Accomodation

We stayed in Hostelling International hostels, guest houses, gymnasiums and the Salvation Army in Reykjavik. The guest houses and Hostelling International places were the best. Always shared facilities. The guest houses and Hostelling International places always had a kitchen to use and often extras like laundry and Internet access. The gymnasiums were nothing special but were pretty much deserted so it was like having your own gigantic room. Some places servered a cold breakfast for about $10, never had it. I hated the Salvation Army in Reykjavik and would never stay there again. We were paying between $25 and $35 a night for accomodation.

Museums

Museums in Iceland are understandably small. They are however very well organized and surprisingly quiet. When we were there we seemed to have the museums to ourselves. We really only went to museums while in Reykjavik, where the major are located: National Gallery, History Museum etc. We bought a Reyjavik tourist card for forty-eight hours for about $12 CDN that got you in to all of them and included swimming pools and public transportation so you could get out to the museums. One thing of note about the museums is the bathrooms. I have never been is such exquisite bathrooms in public institutions in my life. Everyone seemed better than the last: goose neck faucets, marble floors, marble basins, entirely enclosed stalls etc. One museum that shared a building with a nice restaurant even had real linen hand towels. I was seriously expecting to see a string quartet in the corner had we gone in another one.

Buildings

Iceland buildings are somewhat odd. They are big fans of corrugated iron, both for the rooves and for siding material. There are no trees in Iceland suitable for using as building materials so timber construction is very rare. The buildings that are timber are generally old and the timber was orginally imported from Norway. Concrete construction is popular, which leads to dull looking buildings. Although, there a few spectacular concrete churches around. There are very few buildings made out of stone. My guess is that Iceland contains very little quarriable rock that is suitable for building. Most lava rock to me seems unsutiable for building materials, I'm not mason though so take that with a grain of salt. I also wonder if there is a lack of skilled masons in the country as a result of no stone materials because the few buildings you do see made of stone are of poor quality.

Transportation

If you live in Iceand and have coin you own a turbo diesel 4x4 most often a Toyota Land Cruiser. Never have I seen so many land cruisers. It is really a blessing to have a 4x4 because roads in Iceland are treacherous. Gravel roads with switchbacks going up the sides of fjords are quite normal and many interior roads in Iceland are 4x4 only. If going to Iceland you have two options when leaving the capital city the bus or renting a car. Renting a car in Iceland is expensive. However, getting the unlimited bus ticket is also expensive. When travelling with two or more people having a car turns out to become cheaper than purchasing bus tickets. It is also way more convenient to have a car because you can reach places of a accomodation where being on the bus would require a long hike. We only had a small two wheel drive Toyota Yaris that was fine. If I was to do it all over again and unlimited cash I would get some sort of 4x4 that you could sleep in and had maybe primitive cooking facities. Something like a VW Eurovan that was four wheel drive and had a turbo diesel motor. Then you could go on the interior roads and camp because some of those drives are long and not having to turn around and come back the same day would be a huge benefit.

Landscape

I´ll finish this section later.